Eight — Micro Chapter 10

A date thingy? Ah! Calendar

Eight

The churning in my belly started the moment I stopped moving, the hot bile scorching my throat on the way up. The tears burning deeper as well. That lifeless thing was my mum, and I’d touched her.

I sobbed between the dry heaving until I’d no fluid left in me to give. My parents were dead. Killed the same way as the birds.

Tom. What about Tom? I thought, could he be dead too. My body moved of its own accord, pushing me up and tugging me towards the staircase. Tom hadn’t gone to school the past three days, stuck in his bed with the flu. Could he be okay? My shoes thudded on the stairs as I raced to his room.

“Tom, are you there. Answer me.”

I fumbled for his bed, feeling the duvet scrunched in a ball at the bottom. Where had he gone?

“Oh please no.” What if he’d found my mum in the kitchen. He couldn’t have handled that. I forced myself to stay put and searched the rooms upstairs first. Countless times, I called his name; countless times, I banged my shins against the edge of the beds before heading back down the stairs again.

Fear and panic tightened my throat as I went room by room looking for him. But, it seemed as though he’d just disappeared. Then it came to me. Tom, and Craig‘s younger sister Poppy, were friends. Maybe he’d managed to make his way to Craig’s house. Or, he could also be lost outside somewhere in the dark.

I clambered back up the stairs to my room and found my phone on the desk.